


rehab

by cptsuke



Series: stories from the same routine [4]
Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen hurt, bored and in pain was petulant, annoying and grumpy at the best of times. Jensen hurt, bored and in pain with someone to blame was a laser guided missile of misery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rehab

**Author's Note:**

> (swearing. run on sentences. fucking canada. love/apology letters to roque. fucking australia. no bubble baths what so ever.)

  
  
Jensen hurt, bored and in pain was petulant, annoying and grumpy at the best of times. Jensen hurt, bored and in pain with someone to blame was a laser guided missile of misery. This is why, when Jensen's in hospital with a broken leg, fucked up hand and a long list of other fucked up things, Cougar treads lightly around the kid.  
  
  
It doesn't help that just two days after Clay and Cougar are declared fit for duty they ship out to _it's classified_ with a temporary - _madre de dios_ emphasis on the temporary - techie in tow. Cougar tries to visit Jensen before he has to leave, but he's having more surgery on his hand again.  
  
So Cougar scribbles _deployed, see you when we're back_ on the back of a receipt - _gas (Cougar's) and a chocolate bar (Jensen's); thirty five dollars sixty cents_ \- makes the ward's nurse promise to give it to him.  
  
  
Before Cougar hands his phone in he has twelve messages; all variations of _you fucker, I hope you break all of your legs, I fucking hate you guys_ and _just fucking be careful, loser. Aww fuck, I can't believe you assholes are going without me, you suck_.  
  
  
Cougar doesn't tell Jensen that even Roque misses him after a week with the new guy. It's not that he's useless, or even a bad sort of guy. But he's over eager and it doesn't take long for even Pooch to sheepishly say _I'm afraid I'm gonna turn around and find him humping my leg_.  
  
  
Cougar got a hundred and twenty seven messages on his phone by the time he gets it back. Jensen sounds drunk in at least half of them and it takes Cougar two hours to listen to Jensen whine and threaten Cougar with bodily harm. If it wasn't for that Cougar probably would've been first in line to tell the hacker that tramping around hostile territory with a wet behind the ears FNG wasn't his idea of a good time.  
  
  
He rethinks not mentioning it when the team gets sent on a bogus mission to north, _north_ Canada. They freeze their asses off for two whole fucking weeks in a cold _cold_ glorified shed. Waiting for a guy that they will eventually be told isn't even on the same continent. _Bad intel_ , someone will say apologetically as they pack up and head back to base.  
  
Fuck, Cougar hates the cold, Jensen knows this and Cougar really fucking hopes he's just being paranoid.  
  
  
He visits Jensen when he gets back, determined not to appear fucking suspicious even though his brain is making some pretty good points as to why Jensen was likely responsible for _Canada_. The hacker is scribbling something awkwardly with his left hand on the back of his medical chart with what looks like an orange crayon. Oddly, he doesn't look up when Cougar walks in.  
  
"What you doing?" Cougar asks, after a moment of Jensen completely ignoring him. The hacker startles and pushes his glasses up his nose as he looks at Cougar.  
  
"Hey, Cougs, when you get here?" He looks back down at what he's writing and keeps talking. "Hey, what rhymes with moon?"  
  
"Moon?" Cougar frowns. Shit, he should've visited in the afternoon, it's too early in the morning for him to be following a Jensen conversation. "What are you writing?"  
  
"Apology." Jensen hums as he taps his crayon against his chin, apparently in deep thought. "Writing Roque an apology. For all the shit I gave him when his knee was all fucked up. If it hurt even half as much as my leg I'mma have to write a really good one. Now. What rhymes with moon?"  
  
Jensen looks up expectantly; he looks wired and jittery with dark marks staining the skin beneath his eyes.  
  
"They been changing your meds again?" Cougar asks as Jensen turns his attention back to rereading what he's written.  
  
"Oh yeah, the other shit they had me on went kinda bad."  
  
"Bad?" Cougar was not under the impression that meds could go 'kinda bad'.  
  
"Yeah. Like ‘try to organize a coup on hospital’ bad. Apparently I got two entire wards on my side before I fell over and hurt something." Jensen laughs nervously. "So I'm on new stuff. Now, dude, moon. What rhymes with moon? And it can't be spoon. 'Cause that'd be too homo-erotic."  
  
What the actual fuck? Seriously Cougar is half convinced he's conversing with someone who is actually talking to somebody else. Possibly an imaginary somebody else. Jensen just looks at him like he's expecting a serious answer and, fine, Cougar can play along.  
  
"What's the context?"  
  
Jensen clears his throat, preparing to read his blocky handwriting, and Cougar frowns, the hacker looks like shit. His face shimmers with a fine layer of sweat and every time he looks at Cougar, his eyes seem to lose focus.

Fuck, Cougar thinks, what the fuck sort of drugs are they giving him now?  
  
"I'm sorry I was so mean. We are alike now, on the same team. I am the sun to your moon..."  
  
Jensen looks very serious when he looks at Cougar for feedback and Cougar is at a loss for what to say that won't be _Oh my god, what the fuck? You crazy motherfucker._  
  
"It's very. Uh. _Nice?_ Can't you just give him a hug?"  
  
"Okay, touchy." Jensen complains as Cougar feels his forehead and grabs his wrist. His skin feels cold and clammy, his pulse is beating way, _way_ too fast. "I was going to give him a hug, too. But a poem will mean I _really_ mean it."  
  
"I gotta go, okay?" Cougar says, trying to catch Jensen's eyes. But the hacker just looks down at his 'poem', like he's forgotten Cougar is in the room.  
  
Frowning, Cougar bee-lines for the nurses' desk. Whatever the fuck they have him on is a disaster in the fucking making. The nurse smiles politely at him, and Cougar is about to get serious when she reads Jensen's file and actually takes Cougar's words seriously. She gets up to go find a doctor and Cougar is about to follow her when his phone makes it's irritating beep sequence that means he's getting deployed again.  
  
  
The next place they are sent turns out to be Australia and Cougar feels bad for being so suspicious of Jensen. The guy isn't even allowed near a computer until his hand heals up, and from the look of him, he's too drugged up to be hatching a subtle revenge plan on them anyway. And Cougar feels bad about Jensen missing out on this trip. It actually sounds like something the hacker would have really fucking enjoyed.  
  
A week and a half playing wargames and talking tactics with the SASR. Cougar actually still has friends amongst them from the Gulf; the regiment boys are easy going and they tend to get into less dick measuring contests that they might with other special forces. UK, Cougar is looking at you. Things are looking up.  
  
Only, it turns out that their wargames involve mountain climbing in the Blue Ranges _and_ it's fucking winter down-under. Cougar does not think he is being paranoid anymore and there is a hacker in America who doesn't seem to realise he's hanging a target on his back with this shit.  
  
Pooch laughs and calls them all pussies, he stands out in the fucking snow and calls it _balmy_. Roque and Cougar vote him off the fucking island after that, the part eskimo mother fucker.  
  
  
On the flight home Cougar considers his options. He wants to go in yelling. Wants to not visit at all. His leg is still fucking aching in _memory_ of the cold. Fuck, but he wants to not visit. Only the whole abandonment _issue_ was what prompted this fucking shit to start with.  
  
  
So he visits. Visits as soon as he lands. It's fucking late but, fuck it, Jensen wants to feel a part of the team so badly he can get a three AM visitor.  
  
The nurse at the ward's registry looks at him with tired eyes and for a minute Cougar thinks she's going to send him away until visiting hours start. But she notices his non-reg hair adds it to his military bearing and obviously is switched on enough to make it equal something that's very close to reality. So instead of marching orders, she directs Cougar to Jensen's room with a quiet _He's had a bad week, I'm not sure he'll be very good company._ It sounds like an apology and Cougar wonders just how much of an ass Jensen's been to warrant a warning.  
  
He walks down the hall rethinking his decision not to yell at Jensen; especially if he's making life unpleasant for the staff here. But when he looks in the open door Jensen's sitting up, listlessly flicking though channels.  
  
And the fucker is _grey_. He looks like chilled death. Like twenty four hours spent bleeding and drugged hiding in a shitty European sewer. Jensen doesn't say anything when Cougar comes in, doesn't pause his channel skipping; but he watches Cougar from the corner of his eye. He watches Cougar in a particularly wary way that sets Cougar's teeth on edge.  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Hey." He keeps his eyes forward. _Next channel_.  
  
Cougar shoos candy wrappers off the chair next to the bed and firmly takes the remote control from Jensen.  
  
The hack sighs over loudly, rubs his eyes tiredly and throws his glasses on the bedside counter; atop a pile of trashy magazines.  
  
"You suck, man."  
  
Cougar says nothing, just chooses the most boring, inane channel he can find. _Yes, George Foreman, tell us more about your amazing grill_. Jensen groans unhappily at his choice but Cougar ignores him completely.  
  
"Just go to sleep." Cougar says, after ten minutes of Jensen shifting around and wordlessly complaining.  
  
"I fucking can't." Jensen answers, folding his arms across his chest and then wincing as the movement hurts his broken hand.  
  
" _Sueno_." Cougar says again, pushing because somethings going around in the hacker's head and _pushing_ was the only way Cougar knew to get through to him.  
  
Jensen sighs again, and for a moment Cougar thinks the hacker is going to go back to ignoring him.  
  
"Fuck, man. I'm _tired_. I can't sleep. I fucking _hurt_ all day and all fucking night. And when the shit the give me takes the edge off, all I can hear is their fucking feet. Walking up and down the hall. And those fucking _keys_." He pauses, a slight shudder shakes his shoulders, and Cougar thinks maybe it's not _here_ that has Jensen tied up in knots. "I was fine for the first couple of weeks, but then my meds kept fucking up and then I kept trying to sleep, but I keep hearing those fucking boots and the keys jangling."  
  
He trails off and rubs his eyes again.  
  
"Sorry, man, I'm just tired, you know?"  
  
Cougar nods silently. A pair of heels click lightly up the hall, it's not a particularly sinister sound, but Jensen's jaw tightens and he stares hard at the television. Cougar closes his eyes and listens to the sound. _Really_ listens. Here, now, it sounds like a nurse walking up a hallway, but then he hears the slight jangling of keys and for a brief moment he's transported to another time, another place. A place where the footsteps weren't innocent; the jangling of keys, a promise of violence and fear. A cold room where the four walls seemed to get closer with each passing moment and the chill never left the air. Cougar gets having trouble sleeping with that sitting heavily on your mind.  
  
He thumbs the remote, watches the volume bar tick up one, two, three bars. Jensen frowns but says nothing. Cougar's chair makes a loud scraping noise as he drags it around so it's facing the door a little more. He settles in, lounging back and snagging a magazine from the pile. Neither of them say anything, but the implication is clear as day. Cougar is not going anywhere and if anything comes through that door, they'll be going through Cougar first.  
  
It's only a temporary fix, Cougar can't stay here forever, but Jensen won't be in here forever either and the hacker did the same for Cougar back then.  
  
The next morning, when Cougar makes to leave, Jensen calls out.  
  
"Hey, do you have any idea why I have what looks like a fucking love letter to _Roque_ written in, I'm guessing it's crayon?"  
  
"No idea." Cougar answers innocently. "Anything you want to tell me?"  
  
A magazine frisbees out after Cougar, as he ducks out the door he hears Jensen laughing out a _fuck you_ and everything feels a little lighter.  
  
  
The team - sans Jensen - spends a month in England and it's dreary and rainy and _cold_.  
  
When Cougar gets back Jensen looks better. There's crutches leaning against his bed and his cast is off. He grins when Cougar walks in.  
  
"How was Engla..?" His words trail off as Cougar pulls Jensen's laptop out of his bag. "Holy fucking shit, I will suck your cock right now, hand her over." Cougar mentally adds cocksucking to his long list of shit he'll tease Jensen about later and Jensen makes grabby hands for the laptop. Cougar pulls it out of his reach and lays down his rules.  
  
"Don't fuck your hand up."  
  
"I won't. I swear, I will be a one handed typing _machine_. Come on. Just let me touch her."  
  
"Don't send me to fucking Finland."  
  
Jensen snickers, but replies seriously.  
  
"I won't"  
  
Cougar lowers the computer but holds onto it as Jensen grips it.  
  
"Hurry up and get better, motherfucker. Roque misses your stupid face and the new tech guy keeps trying to hump Pooch's leg."  
  
The grin Jensen gives him is massive and bright and possibly the best thing Cougar's seen in four months.


End file.
